PREFACE. 
A man born on tbe banks of one of the noblest and most fruit- 
ful rivers in America, and whose best days have been spent in 
gardens and orchards, may perhaps be pardoned for talking 
about fruit-trees. 
Indeed the subject deserves not a few, but many words. “Fine 
fruit is the flower of commodities.” It is the most perfect union 
of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees 
full of soft foliage ; blossoms fresh with spring beauty ; and, 
finally, — fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious — such 
are the treasures of the orchard and the garden, temptingly 
offered to every landholder in this bright and sunny, though 
temperate climate. 
“If a man,” says an acute essayist, “should send for me to 
come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a 
basket of fine summer fruit, I should think there was some pro- 
portion between the labour and the reward.” 
I must add a counterpart to this. He who owns a rood of 
proper land in this country, and, in the face of all the pomonal 
riches of the day, only raises crabs and choke-pears, deserves 
to lose the respect of all sensible men. The classical antiqua- 
rian must pardon one for doubting if, amid all the wonderful 
beauty of the golden age, there was- anything to equal our deli- 
cious modern fruits — our honeyed Seckels, and Beurres, our melt- 
ing Rareripes. At any rate, the science of modern horticulture 
has restored almost everything that can be desired to give a 
paradisiacal richness to our fruit-gardens. Yet there are many 
in utter ignorance of most of these fruits, who seem to live 
under some ban of expulsion from all the fair and goodly pro- 
ductions of the garden. 
Happily, the number is every day lessening. America is a 
